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The Star Talks to Robert P. DeVecchi, Believer in Second Chances

Originally published June 16, 2005-By Jonathan Saruk

"Welcome to the world of refugees. Your life will never be the same," the executive director of the International Rescue Committee told Robert P. DeVecchi as he began his first assignment in May 1975. Transport planes full of Vietnamese refugees were landing at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas and Mr. DeVecchi had been told that he would have to leave New York the next day. Mr. DeVecchi, who had recently been through a divorce, said, "No, I can leave tonight."

"Something told me that this was a major crossing point in my life," he said, seated at a small desk in the office of his house on Dunemere Lane in East Hampton, overlooking the Maidstone Club.

"I thought, this is it, I am going from unreality to reality. I am going through the looking glass."

Now the president emeritus of the International Rescue Committee and once its president and chief executive officer, Mr. DeVecchi was recognized last month at Yale University's commencement with the honorary degree of doctor of humane letters. "With compassion, business sense, brilliance, and leadership, you built the International Rescue Committee from a small organization into a global agency of caring and concern," reads a statement included with the degree.

Mr. DeVecchi said that it had never occurred to him that he would be given the degree, whose past recipients include Alan Greenspan, William F. Buckley Jr., George Soros, and Steven Spielberg.

A native of New York City, he earned an undergraduate degree from Yale in 1952, served in the Air Force in Europe for two years, and then returned home to complete an M.B.A at Harvard University in 1956. He joined the Foreign Service, working as a political officer on multilateral diplomacy, East-West relations, and arms control in Washington, D.C., at NATO headquarters in Paris, and at U.S. Embassies in Warsaw and later in Rome.

After 10 years, Mr. DeVecchi and his first wife returned to Paris so that he could take a job with the Conference Board, an economic think tank. As the board's European director, fluent in French and with a working knowledge of Italian and Polish, he was responsible for enlisting European companies to become members of the organization.

His work assisting those in need began in 1972 when he became director of inner cities programs and the New York representative of the Save the Children Federation. "That is where I got my first real taste of fieldwork," he said. He worked in New York neighborhoods including Sunset Park in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side and Harlem in Manhattan.

The 30 years he spent with the International Rescue Committee began with a leave of absence from Save the Children and a four-week volunteer stint at Fort Chaffee where 50,809 Vietnamese refugees were processed in 1975.

Soon afterward, Mr. DeVecchi moved on to Indochina, where he became the region's coordinator. He eventually was responsible for starting refugee assistance programs in 28 countries including Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Pakistan, Afganistan, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, Iraq, El Salvador, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The committee assists an average of one million refugees and displaced persons each year.

Mr. DeVecchi said that although he missed doing fieldwork after moving to the organization's highest level, "I realized that part of the responsibility with anything like that is to give other people that opportunity and to create a spirit within the organization that rewards people that want to get their hands dirty."

Even in retirement he is still involved with the committee, and is adjunct senior fellow for refugees and the displaced at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Betsy Trippe DeVecchi, Mr. DeVecchi's wife and a third-generation East Hampton resident, is no stranger to providing assistance to those in need. She is a cofounder of Orbis International, a nonprofit organization that focuses on ophthalmological assistance and education in third world countries. The DeVecchis, who have been married for 23 years and have six children and 13 grandchildren between them, met at the age of 4. Almost 40 years passed before they ran into each other again, while Ms. DeVecchi was walking her son's dog.

Of her husband's honorary degree, she said, "I was so proud I was in tears. He has made an enormous contribution to the world, humbly."

Mr. DeVecchi said he isn't sure why he volunteered for that first job, in a place that he had to find on a map. "Something told me that this was the challenge I was looking for," he said. "I am a great believer in second chances."

 

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